No matter how powerful this Rambo-style ammo stockpile makes you, the bullet physics are too screwed up to make it really matter. Hit detection is horrible, and you can rarely tell when you are actually putting bullets into the aliens you are fighting. This makes the game mostly spray and pray. You only really fire in an enemy's general direction and hope to god your bullets hit.

Grenade physics are wonky too. Your character must have been a baseball star because grenades shoot out of you like you used a grenade launcher. This means that you frequently underestimate your throws and eventually realize that you should be targeting your enemies with grenades the same way you target them with your gun: by pointing straight at them. That makes no sense!

The game follows the movie pretty much perfectly. Sometimes you are escorting civilians to safety; other times you cover Staff Sergeant Nantz (the main character from the movie) as he does something crazy; and yet other times you are trying to blow up enemy air craft with a rocket launcher. You even get to play the big finale where you call in a missile strike on the enemy command center, and that's pretty cool.

The game's biggest problem is its length. The game is a little over thirty minutes long. That's it. And in those thirty minutes, the game actually manages to hit every major scene from the movie. This just makes me hate the movie more! What sort of epic pacing fail do you have to accomplish for a thirty-minute video game to tell the exact same story your two-hour movie did? That means the movie was an hour-and-a-half of padding and trailers.

Outside of my movie-induced rage, the game itself runs the spectrum from slightly bad to outstandingly mediocre. The best parts of the game are really just missions that other FPSes have done better, but the worst parts are pretty much the same thing. The game never goes into the zone of outright horrible; it's just that there's nothing special here either.

Think about this for a second. You have the option of spending ten dollars on a mediocre thirty-minute shooter or a bad two-hour movie. In the long run, I think I would choose the shooter over the movie, even though it was obviously made for fans of the movie. If I had a third option, I would probably choose burning my ten dollars and watching the flames over either of these experiences, but if you really want to experience the story of an alien race invading the earth for its water via L. A., Battle: Los Angeles is about as good as you'll get.

By
Angelo M. D'Argenio
CCC Freelance Writer

RATING OUT OF 5

RATING DESCRIPTION

3.8

GraphicsThough there are some cool visual moments, most of the game is filled with generic textures and awkward animations.

3.5

ControlIt's hard to screw up a basic "aim down sight" shooter interface, but the lack of hit confirmation and weird grenade physics do detract from the game.

3.2

Music / Sound FX / Voice ActingThe music is the same music from the movie, but the sounds and voices experience a notable drop in quality from their big screen interpretations.

1.5

Play ValueThe game is thirty minutes long and costs ten dollars. That's thirty three cents a minute to play this game. You'll get better value out of a psychic hotline.

3.0

Overall Rating - FairNot an average. See Rating legend below for a final score breakdown.

Review Rating Legend

0.1 - 1.9 = Avoid

2.5 - 2.9 = Average

3.5 - 3.9 = Good

4.5 - 4.9 = Must Buy

2.0 - 2.4 = Poor

3.0 - 3.4 = Fair

4.0 - 4.4 = Great

5.0 = The Best

Game Features:

Assume the role of US Marine soldiers fighting to save the city of Los Angeles from an alien threat.